The Most Misunderstood Basketball Rules

[Jurassic Referee]

Originally Posted by BillyMac

Now, Jurassic Referee, after you have had your second helping of apple pie, would you please sit down tell us an after dinner story about the Pilgrims and the Indians, after which could you please follow up with a story about how you personally might bend some rules to account for advantage and disadvantage in calling three second lane violations and ten second free throw violations. Just exactly how do you decide to call these? Are there black areas, white areas, and gray areas, to these rules? "Do you think it's OK to pick and choose the degree to which a rule has been violated?" "You do believe in consistency, right? Or do you pick and choose what violations that you think should be called under some mystical system known only to yourself?"

Naw, I try to follow what to the best of my knowledge is standard practice. And it's almost universally accepted afaik that we should use some advantage/disadvantage on 3-seconds and 10-seconds for a FT shooter. It isn't universally accepted though to the best of my knowledge, at least in my little section of hell plus surrounding sections, that we should treat other violations like palming, traveling, etc. the same way. To say some illegal second-dribbles are OK in the back court with no pressure while other illegal second dribbles(also with no pressure in the back court) should be called makes zero sense to me.

And imo that's why what we do is an art as well as a science, with the rato of art to science varying game-to-game depending on circumstances IN any particular game.

Happy Thanksgiving to you too, Billy. It's always a great holiday when the Dallas Cowboys are getting their l'il ol' butts schmucked.